Dear friends at TMN,

TMN is my homepage. I consider myself a fan of your work. Does that give me the liberty to be critical? Probably not, but you’re gracious enough to have a feedback link, so I’ll just bite the bullet and use it.

For what it’s worth, I think that James McManus article was pretty low journalism. It begins with a semi-favorable but irrelevant critique of her appearance, then examines a tragedy from her past in a somewhat sympathetic fashion, then proceeds to link this ever so tenuously to stem-cell research. Somewhere in the middle is a digression about the lack of universal health care, which is actually reconnected to the article at large with the phrase “Where was I? Oh, right.” Low journalism? No, just bad writing.

The low part comes in dismissing Laura Bush’s family experience with Alzheimer’s as being irrelevant because a) her family is wealthy, and b) she has moral issues with the use of embryo cells as a research tool. The latter is implied rather than actually discussed. The former is treated with the utmost disdain, although the author does add a phrase crediting her “executive devotion.” The complete lack of respect this shows is appalling.

I realize that James McManus and I have differing views on stem-cell research. One of the things I like about your site is that it presents opinions I don’t necessarily agree with in a fun, articulate, but challenging manner. If any of these adjectives applied to this article, I wouldn’t have written this letter.

Please keep up the good work; TMN is the best read on the ‘net. Not that you need my approval, but you have it anyway.

A grateful reader,
Jon Blume